Page 5 of Wrong Turn

Lei made sure the Mustang was still in neutral and turned off the engine. She took the key from the ignition and inserted it into the glove box.

“Help me,” Kelly grunted from behind her. “I’ve almost got him up against the door.”

“Let me get my weapon first.” Lei turned the key.

“What?” Kelly exclaimed.

“My gun. It’s locked in the glove box.” The key refused to turn. Lei jiggled it impatiently.

Suddenly the Mustang slewed, swinging sideways and crashing into the truck’s rear bumper as Fernando put on the brakes. Kelly cried out as she was flung against a door, and Lei sprawled across the front seats. The keys fell from her hand and slid under the passenger side seat as the Mustang swung and hit the back of the truck from the other direction.

Lei smacked her head on the dash and the gearshift dug into her ribs, but she scrambled for the key anyway, popping her seatbelt and heaving herself headfirst downward, to search under the seat.

The car came to a jarring halt.

Lei got ahold of the keys and reached up, shoving the glove box key in. She turned it.

The driver’s side door yanked open. Lei heaved herself over to look up. Fernando stared down at her in consternation, then reached for her.

Chapter Five

Lei kicked out at Fernando,connecting with his belly, which felt like granite under her athletic shoe. The bald man’s expression went dark as his eyes narrowed and mouth tightened. He grabbed both her ankles, and despite Lei’s thrashing, hauled her out of the vehicle with one powerful heave of muscle-bound arms.

Lei landed on her face in the dirt road, the breath knocked out of her. Spangles of light spun in her vision as she tried to get a breath, her hand scrabbling down to reach for Joao’s knife in her pocket.

“Leave her alone!” Kelly shrieked, and jumped out of the car onto Fernando. She clung to the man’s back, swatting at his shiny pate and trying to grab his ears. Fernando ignored her, much as a rhino does a fly, assessing the situation with his tree trunk legs spread and arms akimbo. “Joao!” he barked.

The other man groaned from the back seat. “Putas!”

Fernando grunted. “Si.But they have their uses.” Kelly had begun to slide down the wall of his back. Fernando reached around and plucked her off, smacking her hard on the side of the head. Lei finally got a breath and scrambled to her feet, just in time to see her friend knocked out from the blow. Fernando tucked Kelly under his arm like a limp kitten, walked over and threw her into the cab of the truck; Kelly’s head thumped against the doorframe.

Lei ran to the opposite side of the Mustang from Fernando. With the car between them, she felt able to engage him a little bit.

“Let us go. We have connections in the United States. We can pay, but you’re going to get in big trouble if you hurt us.” She pulled Joao’s Buck knife out of her pocket and waved it threateningly. Truth was, she had no idea how to use it—she’d been planning to take lessons at some point in the future, if she ever lived to be a cop.

Fernando gave her a dismissive glance. He opened the back door of the Mustang. “Get out, you idiot,” he told Joao; Lei was able to understand with her high school Spanish.

The other man complied, wriggling gracelessly out of the vehicle and heaving himself to his feet. Fernando snorted at the sight of his bound arms and loosened fly. “Thinking with your dick again. You were supposed to wait.”

Joao shrugged. “I didn’t want to wait.”

Fernando pulled a knife at least as big as Lei’s out of a scabbard at his waist. He slashed through the concha belt binding Joao’s arms like it was spaghetti, and the leather fell to the ground. Joao shook out his bulky shoulders, flexing his hands.

Both men turned to face her.

Joao’s eyes slitted with rage as Lei waved his knife at him. “You’re mine, bitch,” he snarled, stalking around one side of the car toward her.

Fernando smiled. His expression scared her more than Joao’s as the bald man circled the vehicle from the other side. “No. You can have the blonde. This one’s mine. I like ‘em with a little fight.”

“Oh, shit,” Lei muttered, glancing back and forth between them. “Oh shit.”

She spun on a heel and made a break for it, straight into the desert.

The area around the dirt road was sandy soil, dotted with the round balls of tumbleweeds and desert sage with an occasional barrel cactus or saguaro adding an extra hazard as Lei ran.

She had one advantage over the men—she ran a lot.

Terror gave her extra speed and she tore through the sagebrush and sand, leaping over a small barrel cactus in her path like a hurdler, never looking back to see if they were catching up to her. Lei’s only advantage was speed, and she couldn’t waste it.

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